The UK’s leading independent builder’s merchant, MKM has over 100 branches and nearly 2500 employees. They’re growing rapidly throughout England, Scotland, and Wales. With expansion, comes more expenses, so they needed an efficient way to manage their mileage costs, and process reimbursements.
Before, MKM had a lengthy manual expense system where workers posted receipts to the finance department. Employees waited for reimbursements, and paperwork often went missing causing frustration.
While the finance team received wads of receipts at month-end which had to be collated. The data would then be re-entered onto a spreadsheet before transactions would be posted to expense accounts with a manual journal entry.
By working with accountabl, both groups witnessed a revolution. All workers were issued expense cards and an app, which prompted them to capture receipts in real time, while allowing them to log business mileage and keep a digital repository of their expenses.
For the finance team, month-end closing is now much faster. They receive one invoice for all their employee expenses which automatically pulls through information like the supplier, the expense account, and tax code which can be posted in one go.
They can now also track the carbon footprint of their business purchases and travel, create compliant GHG reports, and futureproof against legislative changes using accountabl. It also increased worker engagement by helping them to visualise the impact of their purchases and travel, supporting long-term behaviour change and increased sustainability.
"If I was going to summarise accountabl, it sped up our transactional processing, it's enabled the team to process things quicker and be able to concentrate on more important activities. And it's so much better, for the employees within the business in terms of making their claims quicker."
Jonathan Barrett, Group Financial Controller